Hey Hey In Rockers and Welcome to The Lobby! I’m here with my band, Goo Goo Dolls on a rare day off spent here in Virginia Beach, Virginia as we make our way through the US on the 2017 Long Way Home Summer Tour with opener Philip Phillips. We’ve been doing 5-6 shows a week to awesome crowds up and down the East Coast of America, we head west to play through Texas and then do the West Coast where we began this tour in Early July!

The GGDS shows have been in arenas, amphitheaters and dusty fields, but always fun and always exciting. John and I have been traveling around for the past 30 some years together, but with both of us having children on the road with us it’s been a much different experience than ever before. John’s daughter Lili is 9 months old and laughing and playing with everyone backstage, and my daughter Hana and my wife Miyoko have been out on the tour for the past 3 weeks traveling on the bus and living the life of a touring rock band. My daughter spent a month in Japan with our family before joining the tour so she was pretty jetlagged for most of the visit, but being on tour is a good place to be jetlagged as we have a tour bus with beds in it sitting right offstage at all times! She did manage to stay awake for a bunch of show, I’m always so glad when she gets to share this experience with us, and she seems to love it too! We have another 20 shows to go and then we move on to recording some new music and some spotty touring over the next year!

Our friends from Tokyo, Pinky Doodle Poodle, are continuing their tour around the US; they have been out for a few weeks including a few shows with Goo Goo Dolls in New York and New Jersey, as they are touring in support of their upcoming release “Poodle Boogie” on our Good Charamel Records label. PDP is now opening shows for a band from Nashville called The Winter Sounds that continues through mid September with a shoe at The Music is Art Festival in Buffalo.

The Music is Art Festival will see numerous artists from Japan joining us in Buffalo for my foundation’s 15th annual music/art/dance festival in my hometown of Buffalo. This year with 15 stages of featuring over 100 bands, dancers, DJs, performance artists, poets and visual artists of all kinds this year we have electronic dance artist Qrion from Hokkaido as well as another Good Charamel artist The Molice from Tokyo who will be here in the US through November doing a short tour in support of their new EP called Signs available this month world wide.

The MiA Festival, my studio, the record label, spreading Japanese music to the ears of people in the states, my daughter’s starting kindergarten, nightly rock shows …. This is my day, I try to get in a swim and such every once in a while and I couldn’t be happier… thanks so much for checking in on me as I continue the journey, it’s been a long time that we’ve been sharing a little time together and I’m glad we’re able to stay in touch here in the pages of the Mighty In Rock …..